I dreamed about parasols last night

21 July 2008

Last week, Becky and I went to a pictage users group meeting. Pictage is this company that helps photographers with marketing, selling and printing their photography and each month, they have meet-ups and photographers from all over the valley get together.

One of the people making announcements at the meeting mentioned that a photographer in Tucson is getting a group together to take Trash the Dress* pictures in Bisbee, Arizona (Bisbee happens to be one of the coolest looking places in Arizona, it used to be a copper mining town, now it looks kinda like a ghost town with old Victorian houses---it's a great place to be a tourist and where one of my friends started off her honeymoon.) Bisbee is a 3 hour drive from Phoenix, plus I will actually be in Flagstaff on the day of the shoot, so I won't be able to go but I would really like to. I think doing Trash the Dress photos would be so much fun.

The next day after the meeting I started thinking it would be so much fun to get together my own group of photographers and people willing to model for a pretend Trash the Dress shoot. I started looking online at craigslist to see if it is possible to get used wedding dresses for not too much money. I think I could get some of my cute, sweet and beautiful friends to be the models and then whoever wanted to photograph would be welcome to do so. I would send out invites to people from my photography classes and people who I have met as I have been getting more and more interested in photography.

There is this place I drive by all the time, Mother Nature's Tree Farm. I wonder if they would be willing to let photographers take pictures there. I guess it couldn't hurt to ask. It doesn't have that industrial look that I associate with Trash the Dress pictures but it is gorgeous and lush and green, not something you can always find in a desert city.

So I am slowly putting this idea together in my head: Figure out how to get inexpensive wedding dresses. Ask every last girl I know if she would want to model. Contact photographers. Figure out a place. Set a date. Early morning? (Oooh I love nice morning light) Later afternoon? Maybe more practical. What day of the week? Figure out some sort of plan about how my models will get some pictures on cd from the photographers as trade for their time. Maybe get a hair/make up stylist? Guy models too? (Okay, let's not make this too complicated!)

Well, a lot to think about, but one thing I know I will do? Have some parasols there! I have been wanting an excuse to get some parasols. They are so pretty and dreamy. This site, Lunabazaar.com has so many different kinds too.

Trash the dress refers to photographsthat contrasts elegant clothing with an environment in which it is completely out of place. It is generally shot in the style of glossy beauty and glamour photography. The term is alleged to have been coined and the idea started in America, by photographer Mark Eric, after he shot his first Trash The Dress session in New York. Some sources claim that it started in 2001 when Las Vegas wedding photographer John Michael Cooper. However, the idea of destroying a wedding dress has been used in Hollywood symbolically since at least October 1998 when Meg Cummings of the show Sunset Beachran into the ocean in her wedding dress after her wedding was badly interrupted.A model often wears a ball gown, prom dress or wedding dress, and may effectively ruin the dress in the process by getting it wet, dirty or in extreme circumstances tearing or destroying the garment. It may also be done as an additional shoot after the wedding, almost as a declaration that the wedding is done and the dress will not be used again. It is seen as an alternative to storing the dress away, never to be seen again.